The List of Things We Do Not Speak of
by lindsaylaurie
Summary: In their seventh year the Marauders discover that Remus has been keeping a list of their most embarrassing moments.


((A/N: I am actually taking a class called Harry Potter as literature and for assignment 2 we could write a fanfiction… so I wrote this. I got an A on it, by the way!))

The Ancient Runes exam had been torture.

Remus wasn't exactly sure why he decided to continue with the subject in the first place. Interesting as it may be, there was so much memorization involved that Remus feared his copious amounts of studying had not been enough. Strange symbols flashed through his mind as he plodded up the stairs towards the painting of the Fat Lady. He just couldn't help but wonder if he'd gotten number twenty-six right…

"Boomslang," he muttered, looking up for only a moment at the garishly pink painting before him. She might have said something as Remus slipped through the tunnel, but he didn't catch it. His mind was still buzzing with squiggly runes as he mounted the stairs to his dormitory.

But the sound of laughter stopped him in his tracks just outside the familiar wooden door. For a moment, Remus considered turning right back around to take shelter in the library, but thought better of it. Maybe his friends' laughter would take his mind off the exam. Or, maybe, they would be highly obnoxious and aggravate his blossoming headache. He hoped for the former.

He pushed a bit of stray hair from his scarred face and straightened up his tie before pushing the door open. Though Remus had expected his friends to be laughing, he had not expected them to be perched on his bed.

Sirius sat cross-legged right in the middle, clutching at the holes in his jeans as he shook with mirth. His eyes were screwed up tight and his long black hair had fallen into his face. James lay sprawled out at Sirius' knees, glasses askew and hair as untidy as ever. And, teetering dangerously, Peter sat at the very edge of the bed, a long roll of parchment held tight in pudgy little hands.

"N-number fourteen," Peter choked, apparently very much unaware of Remus standing in the doorway. "That time wh—Moony!"

Three pairs of eyes turned towards Remus, rooting him to the spot. From the moment he opened the door he'd known exactly what they were reading. He had penned it himself after all. His bag slipped from his shoulder as he shifted from foot to foot. "I see you found the list."

Though Peter looked highly uncomfortable, as if afraid Remus was about to shout at him, Sirius just grinned. "That we did, Moony, that we did. And," he paused to snatch the list away from Peter, who still looked stunned, "we have noticed a pattern."

"Indeed," James said, using his best imitation of an academic. He sat up and straightened out his glasses before looking at Remus very seriously. "You don't seem to appear on the list very often."

"That's because I don't do mortifying things on a daily basis," Remus retorted as he crossed the room to take a seat on Peter's bed, which sat right next to his own. "And, if you don't mind, I'll have that back. We don't speak of these things for a reason." Though he stretched out his hand expectantly, he did not really expect to get it back so easily, especially when Sirius was grinning so widely at him.

"Oh, I dunno, they've all been pretty entertaining so far," Sirius said, smoothing out the old bit of parchment. "Besides, who really cares about what we did years ago? That's ancient history."

"Ancient history now, but that list extends all the way until last week."

That statement really didn't really have the effect Remus hoped. Instead of potentially deterring them from continuing, the prospect of reading their entire embarrassing history seemed to spur them on. Well, except for Peter, who looked slightly uncomfortable now. Remus didn't really blame him, Peter had the most number of entries after all, and he was the one who started the list in the first place.

In their first year, just after the Christmas Holidays, Peter fell asleep in potions. Now that in itself wasn't cause for concern for all of the Marauders, even Remus, on a bad day, did that occasionally. No, the real problem came when Peter began snoring and Sirius thought it would be funny to silence him by sticking slugs up his nose. Needless to say, it did not end well.

After that, Peter begged his friends to never speak of it again, and Remus, jokingly, at the time, said he would make a note of it. As the years went by (and the embarrassing incidents piled up), Remus actually had compiled a list, unbeknownst to the other Marauders. They made fun of him enough for meticulously planning out his homework schedule; they didn't need to know he had chronicled all their lowest moments for no reason other than his love for obsessive organization.

"Maybe we _should_ stop," Peter mumbled, looking up at Remus for support. "I mean, it's Moony's list, and we did steal it out from under his bed…"

The fact that his friends had been under his bed should have made him angry or annoyed at the very least, but Remus was very used to regular invasions of his privacy. He should have known not to store anything private under the bed anyway, as he kept his chocolate in a box under his bed and that was especially prone to being stolen. The thieves always replaced what they'd taken after trips to Honeydukes, so that didn't especially bother him.

"Oh, Remus doesn't really care," Sirius said offhandedly as he skimmed through the list. But his eyes caught on something hovering around the bottom. Remus knew exactly what he had seen. Number thirty-four. "But, maybe it is best to leave the past in the past."

His eyes flickered up to meet Remus' and there was a certain sadness behind them that almost made Remus look away. Number thirty-four on the list simply said "The Prank."

Now there had been many pranks in the history of the Marauders but none that deserved such capitalization. This one had involved Sirius Black, a particularly greasy Slytherin, and a full moon. The aftermath had been awful. Remus and Sirius didn't speak for weeks and, even when they did end up speaking again, it took a long time for their friendship to return to normal.

But James, who wasn't at all capable of reading the new tension in the room, snatched the roll of parchment from Sirius. "Number twenty-eight," he read, a grin spreading across his features. "The Poodle Incident."

Any trace of remorse slid right off Sirius' face as he yanked the list from James' hands, nearly tearing it in the process. "Playing dirty now, are we, Prongs? How about number twenty? The Breakfast Fiasco."

Remus had the sense to pull out his wand just as James made a wild grab for the list. "_Accio list._" The parchment shot out of Sirius' hand and rolled up neatly in the air as it zoomed into Remus' outstretched palm. James landed awkwardly at Sirius' knees.

Though Peter looked quite relieved that Remus had taken control of the situation, James and Sirius had taken to glaring at each other murderously. Of course Remus knew neither of them actually meant it, but he also knew that he needed to end the whole list business quickly before things got out of hand.

"Oh, come on, Sirius, no one cares if Padfoot has a, er, certain affinity for poodles." Sirius went scarlet (which was actually a very rare occurrence) and looked away sharply but did not comment. "And, James, it doesn't matter that Lily smashed your face into a bowl of cereal in the fourth year. You're together now, aren't you?"

James seemed to inflate at the reminder that his long term obsession had finally paid off. He cast a mischievous glance at Peter and said, "And it's fine that Wormtail snorted slugs out his nose because it turned out to be an amazing bit of comedy."

Evidently Peter thought he was getting out this conversation scot-free for he sputtered and went very red as Sirius and James chortled. He cast his eyes desperately around the room, presumably for something to take the focus off himself before he looked to Remus. "But what about Moony? Someone read something embarrassing about Moony and we can be done with it!"

The list flashed through Remus' mind in an instant as he desperately tried to remember what he'd written about himself. Unfortunately, the only entry that came to mind at the moment was The Prank but that was still a bit of a sore spot for all of them, so no one would dare bring it up. At least, he hoped. He sat up a little straighter and handed the rolled up parchment to Peter. "Alright then, I suppose that's fair. One thing about me and then the list is going somewhere you lot can't find it."

"Make it a good one, Pete," Sirius said as Peter unfurled the list. "Might be ages before we find this thing again." But as Remus caught Sirius' eye, he knew his friend was thinking the same thing. _Don't mention The Prank. _

Apparently, Peter seemed to take this advice to heart, for he skimmed down the page very slowly, apparently judging the quality of each entry. James was the first to get impatient. "Hurry up, mate! Come on, there's got to be something absolutely mortifying Moony's done that we haven't thought of in awhile."

"Um," Peter muttered, leaning in so close that his nose almost brushed the parchment. Remus steeled himself. "Number forty-two: The Witch Weekly Debacle."

Everyone except Remus howled with laughter, but none more so than Sirius. Remus carefully avoided looking in their general direction, feeling a warm blush creep to his cheeks. "Merlin's beard," Sirius panted when his laughs began to die away. "How could I have forgotten about that? I was the one who caught you reading that bollocks after all."

"It wasn't mine," Remus protested feebly. "I found it in the common room."

"Of course you did," James said, pushing his glasses up his nose and grinning. "And you had absolutely no interest in a little article called "Seventy-five Ways to Ride His Broomstick."

At this, Sirius' laughter returned with full force and Peter nearly fell off the bed. Remus swore his eyeballs were burning from the heat in his face. In one fluid motion, he yanked the list from Peter's hands and shoved it into his bag. "Alright, alright, satisfied now? I'm going to the library."

But as Remus rose from the bed, his headache intensified tenfold. So, instead, he just decided to hide in the common room, which didn't work out because Sirius found him downstairs approximately five minutes later and spent the next ten minutes making up extremely lewd "Witch Weekly" article titles.

To which Remus finally responded, "Well, at least I don't shag poodles."


End file.
